RURAL EXODUS I03 



workmen's houses with small stables. If the landowners will not sell the 

 land required, let them build the houses themselves and lease them, at ex- 

 tremely low rates, to labourers who engage to work the whole year on their 

 farms (i). 



Experience has shown that almost ever>'where where the remedies ad- 

 vocated by the Marquis Imperiali have been applied, there has been an 

 appreciable arrest of emigration. Where the tenant farmers are in a 

 position to give their labourer suitable wages, where they reserv^e some 

 of the winter work for them, especiall}^ threshing, where season labour is 

 given to permanent labourers by contract and on remunerative conditions, 

 labourers are less scarce than formerly. In the same way, in those parts 

 of the country where the landed proprietors have subdivided their farms, 

 small farms are again thriving and there are few labourers who are not 

 also small farmers. This may perhaps, in the long run, lead to the 

 disappearance of the large farms and their transformation into small 

 holdings v/orked by the farmer's family alone, but it will preserve the 

 necessary labourers for agriculture, and that is the essential point. 



At present the large farmers show themselves too greedy of their land : 

 there are districts, where they will not allow labourers to have the lease 

 of the smallest parcel awarded to them at public auctions, though the land 

 so leased generally belongs to charitable institutions, homes or benevolent 

 foundations. And yet have not the poor the first claim to benefit by the 

 wealth bequeathed after all for their good ? The large landlords who 

 subdivide a portion of their land and thus enable workmen's families to 

 live in the country, at the same time render the large farmers a service. 

 " The landlord will find it greatly to his advantage to have round about 

 each large farm four or five small ones the occupants of which will work 

 on the large farm. The large farmer will find in them a nucleus of four or 

 five labourers. It will be a great advantage to him and consequently to 

 the proprietor. " (2). M. Emile Tibbaut, in an article published at the 

 end of 1912 in La Belgique artistique et litter aire, compares three large com- 

 munes in Flanders, Overmeire, Calcken and lyoochristy from the point 

 of view of rural exodus. While the population of the two former is dimin- 

 ishing, that of Loochristy, a village near Ghent, however, where the 

 farms are quite small, is continually increasing (3). Horticulture, which 

 is carried on in this commune and market gardening carried on in the vill- 

 ages not too remote from the large towns, employ a ver}^ large number of 

 labourers on a very limited area, thus contributing to reduce the rural 

 exodus considerably. With regard to home industries, they are only useful, 

 from the agricultural point of view, when they are limited to certain seas- 



(i) Compte rendu de la 396 Assetnblee ceneraU de la Federation des Cercles catholiques. BruS' 

 sels, Mommens, 1908, page 20. 



(2) Speech of M. Jolyat the General Meeting of the Federation of Catholic Clubs 1908. Report, 

 above quoted. 



{3) See also le Pratriote, of January 17th., 1913. 



